So much has changed this last week. Internal changes. Things shifting and circling. It’s kind of been a lot of personal enlightenment, all at one. Shifting, circling, new perceptions, understandings… SO MUCH. And I really wish I could write about it right now. But it’s so overwhelming I can’t even think to put the words to it,

I will say that I watched “The Fault In Our Stars” twice this week. and it has changed my life. That sounds sort of cheesy if you’ve seen it… but it really really has. I want to write, but I’m still sorting. Hopefully things settle a bit soon and I can try and make sense of it all. I know it’s all good shifts, but it gives me anxiety anyway. Been hard to keep my brain unoccupied enough to sleep because it keeps dwelling on this stuff. But I think I’m on to something….!

So I’m going to take a little break from writing about IBD and write about some people in my life. I was having this pain in my rib tonight and so, being a massage therapist, I started trying to work out the sore spot, but also being conscious of my thoughts because I have learned that pain in the body always has emotion attached to it, be it old or new. As I worked, I had a sudden memory of my aunt T. She was one of the kindest, most generous and sincere people I have ever known. And strong. Very strong. She was born with Cystic Fibrosis. Most people with CF don’t live beyond childhood. CF affects the heart and lungs primarily. My aunt was one of the lucky few who lived into adulthood. She married, she even had a child that she was advised not to have. And I NEVER heard her say a bitter word or saw her unhappy about her lot in life. In fact, she’d probably tell you her life was pretty great. When I was in high school, she was finally able to get a heart and lung transplant, essentially removing the CF. Shortly after, she and my uncle adopted another child. Things were good. My aunt was the healthiest I’d ever seen her and I remember her saying once how it was the first time she’d been able to get through an entire hymn at church without having trouble breathing. A few years later, she went for a routine checkup and found she had cancer. And it was aggressive. Because she’d had organ transplants, there was little they could do to treat it. She had a compromised immune system.

Just weeks after her diagnosis, I was assaulted. Because I was dealing with my own trauma, I avoided a lot of people in general. I didn’t see my aunt again till nearly a month later. I was about to go out of town with my mom and we stopped to see my aunt because we knew she hadn’t been doing well and probably didn’t have much time left with us. I remember seeing her lying there, so thin and frail, propped up everywhere with pillows. Before anything else was said, she looks at me, and says “I’m so sorry about what happened…” and I’m thinking… “sorry for me? YOU’RE DYING. You will never see your kids grow up. How can you be worried about MY loss?”

She died the next day.

I’ve always felt cheated that I couldn’t really grieve for her at the time. Not like I feel I would have had I not been dealing with my own junk. She’s often on my mind and I wish that I had been able to spend more time with her in those last couple of months. There are so many things I would have liked to talk to her about.

I recently lost one of my best friends. He was also one of the sweetest, kindest, giving people I knew. I swear he’d give you the shirt off his back with a smile if you needed it. I didn’t know it, but he struggled with mental illness after a car accident gave him a head injury. His job kept him traveling a lot so most of our contact the last few years had been online, and it had been a while since we had talked. One night I find out on facebook that he took his own life. I’m still having trouble accepting that he is really gone. He should be here.

I’ve lost other friends to suicide as well, and all of them, all of these people who have died and people who should have LIVED. These are the people we need in the world today. I miss them and I miss all the opportunities we will never have. I don’t know why, but these 5 people in particular have really been on my mind a lot lately. I hope I never lose the memories I have. They should not fade away.

I was really torn between 2 videos to end this post with, so I’m using them both. Love to my dear friends… I will not let you fade away.

The first video, “The Whedonverse: Emotion” is by MrMorda. It captures a lot of the feelings of grief and loss.

The second video is from the show Firefly and is “Calls Me Home” by BuffyProdz. It just makes me think about my friends returning home…

"If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, 'God is crying', and if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, 'Probably because of something you did'." ~ Jack Handey